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BALKAN SUNFLOWERS UPDATE 14 |
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - <nettime-l-temp@material.net> is the temporary home of the nettime-l list while desk.nl rebuilds its list-serving machine. please continue to send messages to <nettime-l@desk.nl> and your commands to <majordomo@desk.nl>. nettime-l-temp should be active for approximately 2 weeks (11-28 Jun 99). - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From: Balkan Sunflowers <wam@mir.org> To: ddh list <balkansunflower-list@ddh.nl> Subject: [Balkansunflower-list] BALKAN SUNFLOWERS UPDATE 14 Date: 09 Jul 99 23:08:04 +0100 BALKAN SUNFLOWERS UPDATE 14 (It's a Friday and Krayg is triskaidephobic - so there is no Update since 12 !!) The last refugee camps, and the ideas for the next steps. (July 09) ------ Contents: Update on Skopje PLANNED PROJECTS FOR ALBANIA !!!! Funding News and Needs Volunteer Groups ------ ------ Skopje ------ Although there are as such not many volunteers here at the moment, things are getting to run. Three volunteers started this week in refugeecamp Cegrane with children activities (and sport for teenagers). Soon they are going to work, as planned with the mental and physical disabled and the elderly at the compound of the ICMC, International Catholic Migration Committee. The volunteers are overnighting there as well -possible because we arranged the place of their tent in the ICMC-compound, eg under safe conditions. Things have changed again. Did the UNHCR still state at Monday the camp will be closed soon, now today they have decided in Skopje that Cegrane will be consolidated and refugees from other camps will come here. It left the NGO´s in confusion as a lot of agreements were already made about leaving. The Shutka-project is also running, but not really at the extent we wanted. in fact we decided as volunteers just to be one group of volunteers, based in Cegrane. From there we travel to Shutka to run the just started English lessons. The English lessons are going well, the pupils are interested and there is a real effort of the local partner in the area. We do have an apartment in the area itself, but as only one volunteer would actually live there (two volunteers are working and we found an enthousiastic local youngster nearby who would like to cooperate with us) we rather form a group in the camp and working in small shifts in Shutka. Some more news about figures and political developments. The refugee-situation as such is stabilising. According to numbers of the UNHCR more than 200.000 refugees returned on a total amount of 230.000. The estimated number of refugees is now 20669, with the assumption -also made by the UNHCR now- that there are still a lot of refugees living in hostfamilies, who are not registered. Some refugees come from an open camp in Macedonia in a military-runned camp in Kosov@, near Prishtine. . There is a voluntary repatriation programme by the UNHCR, whereby refugees can return to Kosov@ for the moment to see what is the situation like. Apart from also refugees, who spontaneous returned to Kosov@ coming back. Last development is the repatriation of refugees from the third countries. Also this will run much quicker than the UNHCR. The idea is that those refugees will land in Skopje and go furtheron by buses to Kosov@. But as a lot of countries are now starting with this, it will be another flow, and the idea is already to have a temporary terminal at the airport to receive all those refugees. The Roma-refugees in the area of Shutka would not return logically, because of the many insults of Albanians to the Roma-population in Kosov@. Together with the Roma center of Skopje (who comes up for the right and interests of Rom-population ) we will look further on the situation and see how BSF can assist in this situation. ------ We are further in contact with the Youth Information Center, who want to run intercultural workshops for youngsters of Slav-macedonian and Albanian-macedonian background. We are helping them with funding and might contribute to the programme as the workshops will be based on bringing the youngsters together on common interest (sport, English lessons, work and so on)'. This would be for the longer term (sept 99-june 2000) and a lot of things has to be elaborated on. To be continued.... Wilbert ------- PLANNED PROJECTS FOR ALBANIA !!!! ------- **Intro Allmost all refugees from Kosov@ have left Albania and so have almost all the NGO's who were here to help leaving Albania back the way they found it when they arrived or even worst. Being the poorest country of Europe, with the highest umeployment rate, a decreasing school system (ever year less children go to school and less teacher want to teach), a hopeless infrastructure, a high criminality, a legal autority without influence, arms spreaded out into every single household and devostated by civil war and total economical collapsed. With other words help is needed in Albania, maybe even more needed here as in Kosov@, but you can't compare those two. Children and youth in Albania are growing up under emergency conditions, and are in a way as traumatised as children from a war zone. Being an average civilian of Albania is almost as living in a refugee camp, the living and housing conditions (beside the center of Tirana) are not that brilliant. Therefor some NGO's have decided to stay behind, at least with a part of their programme, one of those being the Balkan Sunflowers. In many occassions is had been shown that the presents of foreigners and the contacts of local people with people from abroad has a kind of normalisation effect on situation. Most NGO can help with money, but not with human resources, we can, if we want help with human resources. **Practical plans for the period July-September Together with IRC (International Rescue Committee) and CRS (Catholic Relief Service), supported by UNICEF, we are involved in the planning of summercamps for remaining Kosovarian refugee and local Albanian children and youth. This camps will start by the end of July and last till the beginning of September. This camps which will take place in Elbassan, Shkodra, Tirana and Durres. In this summercamps which will be mostly day camps, children will come there in the morning and leave in the evening (but maybe even will stay there the whole time) all kind of events and activities will be organised. At this moment we are in the middle of the planning. If volunteers are out there who have been planning such kind of activities, like summercamps for boyscouts or other children and youth groups, we would be delited if such persons could come as soon as possible and join this planning stage. Also for the participation in those summercamps we are looking for 30 till 40 volunteers which are hopefully having some of this type of experiences. It would be very helpfull, since allthough Albania had under communism a long tradition of summercamps for children this has been totally collapsed in the last 8 years. And basically new ideas and new type of activities are badly needed. For the rest we are looking for volunteers who are willing to stay in Albania and help here instead of going to Kosov@. Again we like to stress that help in Albania, not only for Kosovar refugees, but also for the Albanians is badly needed. ------- Funding News and Needs ------- We have a promise from the Netherlands Refugee Council of funding to help with the first projects in Kosovo. Details are still to be arranged. One of our volunteers had his laptop disappear while in Albania, and thus we are looking for someone who can donate one to replace it for him. (We are still looking for all the materials on our wish lists, computers included!). ------- Volunteer Groups ------- For the moment it is impossible to give precise project descriptions for each Sunday date that volunteer groups will be starting. The work that volunteers are doing is decided nearer the time of their arrival, or after. We are presently looking for volunteers to start any Sunday, for projects in Albania and Kosovo (as and when they develop). For Macedonia we have a need for volunteers as soon as is possible, so for any arrival date soon. And then 23d July and 13th August are the project start dates for later on. for the co-ordination team, Belzig, Germany ----------------- Latest info about the Balkan Sunflowers: http://www.balkansunflowers.org or by email: lists@mir.org apply as volunteer: http://www.mir.org/dataform our bankaccount always needs feeding: Accountnr: 160 160 1 Accountname: Sunflower Bank Oekobank Frankfurt (Germany) Blz 500 901 00 Telephone numbers: +49-33841-30670 +49-33841-30671 (fax) ---------------------------------------------------------------- News from the | To (un)subscribe: Send an E-mail to: Balkan Sunflower | majordomo@ddh.nl and put in the text body: | (un)subscribe balkansunflower-list ---------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------- News from the | To unsubscribe: Send an E-mail to: Balkan Sunflowers | majordomo@ddh.nl and put in the text body: (the new SunCokret) | unsubscribe balkansunflower-list ---------------------------------------------------------------- More on the project: http://www.ddh.nl/org/balkansunflower